Skip to main content Authority & AI Search Case Study
By building this plumbing and HVAC company's authority from the ground up, we grew its Domain Rating from 2 to 36, added 447 referring domains, and earned 368 citations across AI search engines, lifting organic traffic to 1.2K a month.
Ahrefs · Authority, AI & Traffic
The plumbing and HVAC company had good content but no authority behind it, so it was invisible in both traditional and AI search. We built that authority deliberately: Domain Rating climbed from 2 to 36, referring domains grew by 447 to 458, and backlinks rose by 1,700. That same authority and citable content earned 368 responses across AI engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews, and organic traffic broke out to 1.2K monthly visits.
DR 2 → 36
Domain Rating
458
Referring domains (+447)
368
AI citations
1.2K
Organic traffic / mo
The Situation
The plumbing and HVAC company had built genuinely useful pages, but with a Domain Rating of 2 and almost no backlinks, Google had no reason to trust them. It ranked nowhere in traditional search and appeared in no AI answers at all.
So we made authority the priority. Domain Rating rose from 2 to 36 and referring domains grew by 447. With real weight behind the domain, its pages climbed, AI engines began citing it 368 times, and organic traffic broke out to 1.2K monthly visits.
DR 2 → 36
Domain Rating
368
AI citations earned
The Challenge
The company's pages were well made, but the domain carried almost no authority. With a Domain Rating of 2 and a bare backlink profile, even strong content stayed buried in traditional results and was never picked up by AI engines.
No amount of on-page work would fix a trust problem. The job was to build the domain's authority deliberately and steadily, so the content it already had could finally rank and get cited.
The Execution
Prepared the Site to Convert Authority Into Rankings
Before chasing links, we made sure the site was technically sound and well structured, so any authority we earned would flow cleanly to the pages that needed it.
Created Linkable, Citable Reference Content
We produced reference guides, original data, and simple tools designed to earn links and to give AI engines clear, quotable answers worth surfacing.
Ran a Sustained Link-Acquisition Campaign
Through consistent outreach and placements, we grew referring domains by 447 to 458 and backlinks by 1,700, lifting Domain Rating from 2 to 36.
Earned Visibility Across AI Search
As authority and citable content grew, the brand began appearing across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, and Google's AI features, earning 368 AI responses where before it had none.
The Results
36
Domain Rating (from 2)
458
Referring domains (+447)
368
AI citations
1.2K
Organic traffic / mo
What We Did
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